Preparedness

Items in the Preparedness category will cover everything from Emergency Medical Services to vaccination programs. This division at ADHS tracks contagious disease, coordinates emergency preparedness activity, licenses EMTs and Paramedics, regulates ambulance companies, authorizes special hospital designations like cardiac care center and Level IV trauma center, issues birth and death certificates, and tracks critical health data through various sources including hospital discharge information.

AZ Interventions to Improve Vaccination Rates

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00January 27th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

Arizona law requires kids to get certain vaccines in order to attend school unless a doctor signs a medical exemption form or a parent signs a religious or personal belief exemption form. There’s been an increasing number of parents who are signing personal belief exemption forms - putting herd mmunity at risk. Every year we [...]

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Unvaccinated Kids Come in Clusters

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 27th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

Courtesy: Journal of Pediatrics Last week’s issue of the Journal Pediatrics sheds light on something that we see here in Arizona - that parental refusal and delay of childhood vaccines is clustered in certain communities. The study was done in California and found that the percentage of kids who were under-immunized increased from 8% [...]

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Vaccines & the Social Contract

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 26th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

At the core - vaccines are really about community protection. Our public health system depends on a solid network of providers that are available to vaccinate kids for all of the nasty infectious diseases that have plagued humanity for millennium. It’s not just access to care and a solid network of providers that vaccinate that [...]

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Five AZ Measles Cases from a Disneyland Exposure

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 23rd, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

By now you’ve probably heard about the measles outbreak associated with travel to Disneyland. CDC is reporting about 50 measles cases (in multiple states) who had been to Disneyland in late December. Arizona joined the list this week. This week we had 5 measles cases associated with the Disneyland outbreak, one in Maricopa County and 4 in Pinal [...]

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Influenza Now Widespread in Arizona

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 20th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

By now, it’s likely you know someone who’s gotten the flu this year. Last week, Arizona joined the ranks of 46 other states that are having “widespread” influenza activity. We’ve had 2,316 cases reported so far this season, with 761 of those being reported in the last week. That’s 130% more cases than this time [...]

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Staying in the Saddle

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 9th, 2015|Behavioral Health, General, Preparedness, Prevention|

We’ve had a great run together since I accepted the Interim ADHS Director position 6 years ago. I’m grateful to all of you for trusting me in this important position and for working together for the benefit of the folks of Arizona. We’ve made tremendous progress toward our Vision of Health and Wellness for all [...]

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State Health Assessment & Arizona Health Improvement Plan

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 9th, 2015|Affordable Care Act, Behavioral Health, Preparedness, Prevention|

To better understand the health status of Arizona's population, we partnered with the county health departments to conduct Community Health Assessments in 2014. We used the Community Health Assessments to develop a comprehensive State Health Assessment, which became basis for putting together an Arizona Health Improvement Plan (AzHIP). We began developing the AzHIP in late [...]

Childhood Immunizations

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:21-07:00January 6th, 2015|Preparedness|

Childhood immunizations are widely credited as one of the top ten public health achievements of the 20th century. For the 13 diseases included on the current U.S. childhood immunization schedule, 20 million cases of disease are prevented per year, 42,000 lives are saved, and the healthcare system realizes $13.6 million in direct medical costs (see [...]

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Cardiac Arrest Survival

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:21-07:00January 5th, 2015|Preparedness|

Sudden cardiac arrest continued to be a leading cause of death in Arizona during 2014 (7,600/ year), but we also had some promising results. A few years ago our Bureau of EMS & Trauma System enticed dozens of AZ hospitals to become a Cardiac Receiving Centers. The initiative helps hospitals provide treatments scientifically proven to [...]

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The Advent of Big Data

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:21-07:00January 3rd, 2015|Preparedness|

We collect all kinds of surveillance about prevalence of disease, birth, causes of death, reasons for hospital visits, smoking rates and hundreds of other indicators to help us assess health indicators and design interventions to improve outcomes. For the first time ever in 2014, we developed a tool to explore this data and visualize it [...]

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